


dormez-vous, mon coeur? (the cock-crow remix)

by dashery



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Post-Scratch, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 13:06:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery/pseuds/dashery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in the cradle of darkness, Rose Lalonde is Light. Armed with needles of shadow, still she is a beacon against the oncoming storm, and there are those who would carry her banner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dormez-vous, mon coeur? (the cock-crow remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bladeCleaner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/gifts).
  * Inspired by [wake up sensible heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/612422) by [bladeCleaner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner). 



The last night Rose is twelve, she forgets to turn the light off at her desk. It's a waste, a guilty luxury afforded her by a proud adoptive mother who trusts Rose so much she need never come home to hover--or come home at all, really. In the morning, Rose will turn it off and feel faintly ashamed (and yet somehow vengeful, as if her parents will even feel the accidental extra nine cents on the electric bill). So much for her supposed maturity, and she on the biblical brink of adulthood.

But tonight, she sleeps with one eye in darkness and the other bathed in the neodymium glow ninety percent, on the box, as natural as daylight.

She's used to grey, grainy visions rusted-over and somber: brackish rivers, dead forests, the vague monotony provided by the gods' lack of imagination--an empty Stygian negative of the Adirondacks she knows. There are no shadows there.

That is where the Noble Circle croons secrets to her. In voices never meant to hold words, they feed her truth. They tell her of the Empress, the Lord, the angels, all that hungers beyond the Void, and they tell her how to arm herself with their thorns. They tell her of the flood. They tell her of the fall.

The Deep One favors her. She knows the darkness her planet will face and prepares herself for it in sleep.

But this dream bends and shimmers in colors as if splintered through a million prisms, and Rose finds herself not on Earth at all. She stands on a beach--but not grimy beige or even peach, but pure white sands threaded with salmon and cyan and cerulean and yellow and lilac from the rain, from the shining clouds. A dazzlement. It should hurt her eyes but instead fascinates. Her heart stretches without pain or longing, only breathless recognition. Her feet know these sands. Or maybe the land knows her feet; she feels welcomed, waited for. If there are no shadows here, it is because the rain refracts the light into every space, because the sand bounces it gently into the sea.

She can still hear the Oglogoth and the others but they're a scratchy susurrus, faint as stars behind the sky.

And what a sky.

It's like being inside a kaleidoscope--no, the dream of a kaleidoscope. The colors are gentle, fresh, clean and warm. The rain is clear. Beneath it, Rose herself is opalescent. She glows. Droplets dew her eyelashes and crown her sight with rainbows. Despite the brightness--because of the brightness--she refuses to blink. She fills her lungs with light.

She is Iris. The Outer Gods seethe at the back of her mind, forgotten.

there you are!!! :D

She reads the voice more than hears it. It's a splash of lime, sweet, vivid, intense. With it comes the impression of power well-grounded: kindly, unyielding power that could assume the weight of the universe without complaint.

It seems she's been expected.

Hello.  
I feel I should apologize. Have I kept someone waiting?

Rose's fingers twitch at her sides, as if remembering keys she's never touched.

oh no silly!  
yes ive been looking forward to this meeting for a long time  
but thats not your fault.....  
its just how things had to be!!!  
its just like how i knew you were always going to come continue what we started  
:)  
This does sound familiar.  
Or rather,  
Anticipated?

She begins to walk along the shore. The rain-soaked breeze buffets Rose's back, throws her hair into her face. She feels like laughing and can't say why.

I remain skeptical, however, that the travel plans of a preteen girl in the Land of Nod rank so highly among the ministers of destiny that they should make time to schedule the minutiae.  
You'll pardon me if I chalk this one up to the whimsy of my unconscious.  
hehehe...  
i think you of all people should understand the significance of dreams by now!  
I understand the significance of my nightly visitations.

The cherubs. The clowns. She has not seen them yet, but Oglogoth fills the space between stars every night with their sins, and He has not yet covered, after a year of teaching, Orion's heel.

But am I correct in inferring that this is not, in fact, a missive from the Outer Gods?  
and what if it is??  
It was a rhetorical question. I know that it is not, which suggests that I'm simply experiencing the nightly potpourri of randomly assorted images routinely enjoyed, I am told, by the rest of the population.  
Am I wrong?

For Rose thinks--hopes?--she might be. When she closes her eyes and lets her foot sink into the sand, what rises is the smell of earth, and fur, and pumpkins--the cool dampness of growing things, the impatience of April frost about to crack. The scent is too real for her senses to disbelieve. It's like muscle memory. Her ears crave this voice more than the gods' colorless truth.

hmmm  
i dont think i can say  
after all if youre right that would make me a figment of your imagination :o  
i couldnt know anything you dont know or else you would know it and then you wouldnt be asking if i know it!  
but maaaaybe what you should be asking yourself........  
(or the me who is you :P)  
is what could ever be simple about one of your dreams???

She wades into the waves and the water lights up where she steps. Rose treads gold edged with sunset violet.

Delighted, the wind picks up around her. It pulls her parallel to the shore again, tugging at her hands until she finds herself skipping to keep up. She leaves a glittering skein of sunlight in her wake.

You're very insistent.  
We may be moving too fast for a first date.  
What would my parents think if they knew strangers were chatting up their dear, precious daughter at all hours of the night?  
haha, very funny!  
you are a riot.  
please, quit your day job.  
I'm twelve.

The wind's voice is the warmest blue she's never seen, and faintly breathless--as if poised on the verge of a punchline, on the cusp of a laugh. There's power here, too, but he (she's sure it's a he) is as comfortable to Rose as the other, the she, the avatar of both harvest and hunt. While she chose to open herself to Nrub'yiglith and the circles he serves, she realizes there is nothing to open to these two. She only is. And it's so easy. Rose has never felt this light.

She spits wet hair from her mouth unself-consciously and her breezy friend helps her this time, sweeping the strands back from her face, drying the back of her neck.

you just have to see this guy, ok.  
Do I?  
yes. you do.  
he is ridiculous.  
he'll tell you he was raised by a pony on a diet of oats and mashed cheez-its and you should believe every word.  
That does sound worthy of ridicule.  
I'm in.  
i knew i could always count on you, rose.

She has never had friends. The Circle and its demands were too big for that. Too big for her. It was so easy at eleven to pledge herself to a starless victory.

For the first time, the idea she might be missing something pinches her chest.

Rose has no time to pause, though. A pier juts out from the shore, still yards away, and she's an experienced enough medium to know the end of a dream approaching.

What is this legacy I'm supposedly fulfilling?  
If this is my dream, I'm sure you already know I'm somewhat spoken for, as far as lifetime-encompassing enterprises go.

The gods eat at the edge of her dream, making one buttery cloud past the pier flicker ominously. She can make out a single figure on the jetty and instinctively rules out both the blue and the green voice. This is someone new. Or someone else, rather. She has never had friends, but if she had, these would feel like old ones.

yes its related to that!!  
honestly just keep doing what youre doing and everything should turn out ok <3  
That's reassuring.

It is.

unhelpful cryptic future babbley gobbledegook aside, though!  
hey!!!  
shoosh, i am talking to rose.  
all that aside, i think you're forgetting an important thing.  
maybe even THE most important thing.  
it's vitally important that you understand the importance of this really, really very important thing, rose.  
are you ready?  
I've loosened the laces of my corset to stave off possible fainting spells from shock. Will that suffice?  
i'll take it.  
rose lalonde.

The balls of her bare feet hit wood instead of sand, and she stands before the jetty waiting for the boy at the end to turn towards her. He must be her age, and his coloring is so familiar--viscerally familiar, as if she turned a corner and came up against an unexpected mirror--that she almost balks. Here, the sky is momentarily clear; his hair is dry, while hers, rain-darkened but glistening, drips mother-of-pearl about her toes.

you won't have to do it alone.

The boy turns, eyes shaded against the glare of her world, and nods ever so slightly. He shares her coloring. The curve of his ear could be her own.

sup  
it was my foaling day but i guess now its yours  
there goes the interplanetary date line on the westbound pony express  
giddyap pchoo

Strangely, she thinks she can feel it when he says it--the turning of the day. Behind her five thousand kilowatt rainclouds, she imagines a gear catch, and the ponderously deepening sky begins its crawl towards morning.

so  
happy birthday or something  
To you as well.  
If I'm correct,  
It's still yesterday where you are.  
yeah  
looking at you  
i get the feeling itll always be yesterday where i am figuratively speaking  
Subscribe to my RSS feed.  
Once you catch up, I can keep you current.  
oh snap its rose lalonde that girl who runs a BLOG  
well damn im sold  
jesus wheres my fucking pen where do i sign on

\--

When she wakes, she removes the toothmarked, shriveled ear of her bunny (he's irreparably filthy, but Rose has had him since birth) from her mouth and lies in bed for an unprecedented twenty-six minutes, living over and over the strangeness of her dream until she's wrung every drop of color from it.

All but one.

When she rises, she does not take her long-eared companion Caerbannog with her to oversee her dream journal as she writes. Instead, she discovers an empty shoebox, saved for a diorama never assigned, and places him inside before sliding the box, bunny and all, under the bed.

She is thirteen.

She has work to do before her brother Dave truly wakes.

\--

Rose takes to sleeping with a nightlight--for safety, she tells her parents. Night is pitch dark this far from the cities. They applaud her prudence and buy her a supply of blue and green and purple lights. Red lights promote healthy sleep. She replaces Caerbannog's softness under her cheek with the needle-tapered wands blessed by Oglogoth, the Deep One.

Oglogoth is a demanding warden and guards Rose's sleep jealously, but the colored text infects her dreams all the same. hi rose!! <3 i hope youre having a great day!...ok, stop me if you've heard this one. dave strider walks into a bar......hey got a minute i had this weirdass dream and you werent even in it...They flood her screen, but sometimes they turn up on cereal boxes or on graphic tees.

Dave always looks thirteen in her dreams, even though she's sixteen, eighteen. He's taller than she was at that age, straighter, slimmer; he reminds her of a blade, sharp and perfectly balanced, but limited to its function. He is so young.

The gods show her the end of the world, and sometimes he appears in a suit and tie fitted to his teenage frame. She doesn't know which, in the end, hurts her more--the horrors wreaked upon humanity through an alien power's almost casual cruelty, or the glimpse of a perfectly tailored shirt cuff around a wrist too skinny to take seriously. One makes her retch and howl and flee sleep for months. The other haunts her waking hours, knowing what she'll make him face.

John and Jade only appear as disembodied swatches of color, vibrant but intangible. When the Outer Gods' hold on her dreaming weakens, they bombard her with cheer, with power, with memory. She's never sure whether her conversations with them are her sleeping fancy or some impossible recollection of things that never happened, but they comfort her. She takes heart from them, and they let her. They get her through high school, college. Sometimes Rose suspects the gods time these dream meetings so that she gets just enough of a taste of what she needs to keep her going, but, she reasons, that's well within their rights. She is young, very young, and she belongs with them. So long as they still grant her this.

wow, ok. haven't you had enough of the woegothy death throes of space doom yet?  
(DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA)  
as fascinating as all this gloomy psyche stuff is, i think we've maybe got more important things to focus on here. like disguises! you definitely need more crafty disguises. maybe a distinguished mustache. you should write more about mustaches.

Sometimes, in her dreams, the words scrawl themselves in the margins of the books she begins to write, her first attack on the shark-toothed Empress preparing to sink her teeth into the earth. Those are the messages she loves best: the letters webbed into her own work. The evidence of her old friends still working through her.

In spring of 1996, a loss she feels but cannot understand punches through her core. Someone in the world she has never met has ceased to be in it. She doubles over under the axe blow of absence. John is gone.

Jade's death knocks her to the ground.

Years pass between both deaths, and Rose has no reason to know when they pass, but each time, for her, the sun has gone out of the world. She feels they are both gone in an instant, and she never even had them to start with. 

She buries herself in her work, or is buried; the gods like to keep their servants busy. She completes her thesis a month ahead of time. She fills page after page of her personal notebook--no, her prophecy notes--then buys a second composition book, hardly filtering between the murmurs of the Furthest Ring and her own hand. Her fingers cramp. She switches to typing.

She drinks straight vodka and falls asleep at 12:06 in the upper stacks of the rare books collection, a dark corner lit with a single sullen, orange bulb. Dave comes to her.

damn  
am i late to the funeral

They're in some kind of mausoleum, cramped and clammy even in her mourning velvet. His suit is white but for a red bowtie, and, even sleeping, she can feel her lips curl with scorn. But his young, narrow, unchanging face is solemn. By now, she knows his teenage features better than her own.

He wears his grief in the tension of his jaw; he wears it hollow under his eyes.

You're not real.

His lips tighten.

You're a projection of my subconscious, starved of all meaningful connection.  
This is true regardless of the improbable insight the Noble Order's oracular gift allows me into your character, should I ever actually meet you.  
The real you likely has no idea I exist.  
So, if you'll excuse me.  
If the nature of my task dooms me to care and be cared for solely by my mind's own fabrications,  
I'd rather be alone.

She reaches back for Oglogoth, sure that her patrons, once made aware she's entered yet another dream they do not control, will wake her, or at least transfer her to a more productive line, but Dave starts forward and grabs her hand. She freezes. Dream or not, he has never touched her before, and the warmth of his palm burns her skin.

is this really the time for a scholarly dissertation on a daves qualifying conditions for realness

He pulls her forward, and what she took for shadows in the tomb rise and caw in a flapping cacophony. When the feathers clear, Rose finds herself afloat in a sea of iron and flame, deafened by the creak and clank of moving metal. Skeletons of skyscrapers surround her, but the sky remains open, somehow. Open and black. All light rises red and glowing from the molten rock that flows around them.

She looks up, and Dave's sunglasses reflect only that: the heat. The movement. Clockwork and motion, perpetual, ticking endlessly without purpose. Until given one.

He lets go of her hand and she tries to understand what he is showing her.

im sorry  
it sucks  
and apart from being sad as sodden fuck about it i dont know what we can do  
There isn't anything to do.  
Grief isn't something one "does."  
yeah  
thats all i can tell you though  
be sad

He looks so helpless as he says it. She almost reaches to retake his hand. She almost cracks him one across the face to start a fight, just to see him honed again.

I don't know.  
That may help.  
Thanks, I guess?  
dont mention it  
i mean seriously dont  
getting bereavement counseling from your imaginary wondertwin sounds pretty whack no matter how filthy rad a guy he is  
I'll be sure to hide all evidence of hysterical neurosis from my equally imaginary therapist.  
Especially the idea that any part of me could consider you "rad."  
Institutionalization would put a crimp in both my plans and, worse, my style.  
word  


Light flares. The lava spits and settles again, and Dave lifts his face to the pitch-black sky as if to blink the glare out of his eyes.

you know  
you should get some real friends  
ones who arent seafood buffet monsters from space hell and slash or brain ghosts  
You know I can't do that, Dave.

She balls her fists and lifts her chin as well. In Dave's darkness, she can almost make out the roiling of the outer gods. They're clearer here than in her dream world of rainbows and chalky sand.

Association with me will prove dangerous in the battle to come.  
And having to divide my energies between Earth's preparations and nurturing a friendship,  
It compromises me.  
rose  
I see.  
If anything, losing John and Jade has shown me that, indeed, perhaps I was meant to fight this battle alone.  
what  
no  
cut the horseshit lalonde you know youll have me

She meets his gaze then and smiles, even as she opens her arms to the darkness.

But I don't want you to die.

Oglogoth's tendrils twine around her shoulders and she is gone.

\--

Later, curled safely in the gods' terrible embrace, one asks, **WHOwhowhowhoisHETOYOU?**

Oglogoth shudders, but with anger, and she presses her cheek into one claw as if it were her mother's.

"He is a tool."

The Furthest Ring is far above human humor, and they are satisfied.

(hehehe), she pretends to hear, and lets a ghost land a kiss like a breath above her ear.

\--

The next morning she meets Becka, who offers her coffee, companionship, and Manhattan. Rose accepts all three.

Becka is her first friend.

\--

In the end, though, the Noble Circle chooses to use her brother. And they wield the dream of him against her.

She wakes in a cold sweat from the vision of him smeared with teal and blood, of the unnatural shape of his jaw as it breaks around eldritch syllables, of the sword in his hand as it bites into his own lean neck, smooth and elegant as hers. The flash of color as he glitches between himself and the troll blind as justice, blind as mercy. The way they twisted his laughter--its laughter--into madness.

She does not scream. She has not screamed since the night Oglogoth showed her the end of Earth. But she sobs silently into her pillow, wracked with rage.

How dare they?

_Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god._

Oh, she could kill them. She could take her wands and fire into the heart of them. They told her they would make her one of them, they offered her the understanding of the omniscient, the understanding she wanted from her parents when she had no family.

She gained Dave and they muttered, she remembered John and Jade and they held her tighter, but when Rose begins to treasure Becka--witty Becka, broken Becka, Becka so like Jade and John and her brother and so uselessly _not_ them--they tighten the noose.

_Your heart belongs to us, Seer, and **only us.**_

Rose must choose. Keep Becka and stay human. Keep Becka and weaken herself. Keep Becka and lose her sisterhood with the Noble Circle, who suckled her on Truth.

She is twenty-six.

She cannot bring Becka into her war when she knows all her weapons are fated to break.

\--

hey

Months have passed. Winter shades into spring without thawing her. She has cut ties with Becka, though they share space. Neither pretends the other is alive. Perhaps, Rose thinks, she isn't.

hey  
rose

The motherfucking monsters are pleased, at least. They nearly purr, though that is the wrong word for a sound so awful and inhuman in its satisfaction. Their guard is lowered. She's fallen asleep in the day again, one bar of golden afternoon light from between the window blinds sinking over her eyes.

For once, she would rather wake.

rose im going to count to three and if you dont start paying shamefully gratuitous amounts of attention to me im gonna throw all your beardy wizard smut out the window  
Don't.  
on fire  
I don't have time for this.  
too bad because i do  
I know this is a dream. Shouldn't I be able to wake myself up?  
How do I wake back me up.  
you listen to me thats what you do

The room is a violet mirror of her own room, or a room like the one she had as a girl. She'd be immediately at ease if she weren't so irritated. Dave sets to rifling through her belongings like he has any right to snoop. Perhaps he does. His pajamas are purple, too, as if someone customized him to match the furniture.

Rude.  
im part of your conscience right  
let me be your guide  
That isn't how it works.  
And brother-projection or not, blithely pawing through a lady's things will neither endear nor comfort her.  
im not here to comfort you

She shuts up, and he looks chagrined, like he didn't mean to say it. Or to say it so bluntly. He straightens and shuffles a ball of yarn from hand to hand, focusing on it rather than on her.

Then,  
You're making a good start.  
thanks  
ok no  
look  
im sorry

The back of her throat tastes so bitter.

Really.  
Well, that makes it all better, doesn't it?  
yeah  
i am

Dave looks up then, ball trapped between his hands, and in that imperfect, teenage mirror of her face, Rose discovers her own misery, edged and tempered with frustration. He's no tool, she suddenly thinks. If someone took him in hand, he'd be a weapon. He has the same metal at his core as she. He's Rose, reordered. Repurposed.

I didn't mean it.  
I don't want to be alone.

The hard set of his mouth softens. Then, with one hand in his pocket, he bounces the yarn gently off the space between her eyes. She blinks.

Strider?  
tag me in coach  
in my dream i am the star  
its me

He picks the ball up and offers it to her, subdued but unbowed. She tips her chin up first.

You forget that this is my dream.  
You can only hope for a walk-on role.  
details  
the balls in your court for now i guess  
but tennis ball isnt a one man sport  
Your pony guardian didn't put much stock in physical education classes, did she.  
stfu dont talk about captain doby that way  
when im all trying to tell you how when the president walks onto the field to pitch the opening doozy ill be flying your flag

She pauses.

Presidents.  
what  
There will be two.  
ok whatever my rbis big enough to serve double  
Will you really, Dave?  
Wear my colors.

He shoots her a glance, then cocks an eyebrow high. This time, when he tosses the ball, Rose catches it.

His clothes ruffle briefly, bloom orange, then fade to moon-silvered purple again.

you tell me  
youre the one with unreal insight into my character  
but let me show you something

He steps onto her window ledge, balances against the frame, and reaches back for her hand.

She takes it.

He is always thirteen in her dreams, but so is she, and he guides her through the darkness like he's got a map in his head. The horrorterrors scrape at the void, but never touch them.

first ive got something to ask you  
Shoot.  
you dont want me to die

Her hand tightens, and Dave does her the service of not noticing.

It isn't right.  
alright  
but has it occurred to you  
that maybe i think some company would be nice before its all over  
company that understands  
youre not the only one who has dreams

She has nothing to say to that.

Becka deserves better, at least.  
beckas an adult  
and just because people dont talk like dictionaries doesnt mean theyre dumb  
let her make her own decisions about who she wants to hitch her buddy wagon to  
The gods were pretty emphatic about it.  
are you so sure theyre right  
Have you, as a part of me privy to my correspondence with them, ever known them to be wrong?  
not really  
but they kind of freak me out  
and also at this point i basically hate them a lot and want to launch a couple of them into the sun  
selfish space assholes  
You know what?  
Me too.  
That's all there really is to say about the matter.  
amen  
ok look now

As far as she can tell, they're still floating through a lot of nothingness. Then, squinting, she makes it out: another planet with a chained purple moon just like the one they just left.

Dave?  
watch

It explodes. It's the Empress, the Condescension, that bitch of an alien sea, and Rose's insides turn white with ice. But Dave still holds her hand, and he _holds_ it. Shakes his head. Points.

Two specks of color emerge from the wreckage. They're so bright she has to shield her eyes. They shimmer like stars. Like rainbows. Like the waterfalls on her world of light.

She can see their past. An enormous expanse of time, too long to be believed, and the loneliness, the isolation. Pumpkins. Chitin. Rags and seagulls. Fear. Silence. An ocean that covers the globe. Too many cats, with too many eyes. Too little sleep. Ribbons of blue and green.

Her legacy.

The work continues.  
yeah  
but keep looking

Dave draws her down through the atmosphere, though she wants to go forward, and she recognizes New York despite the wreckage, despite the ceaseless chessboard grid no human enterprise would build. They pilot each other through the strands of red that stretch over their broken world. In their purple outfits, they are invisible against the twilit sky.

They touch down where the northwest coast of the United States used to be. He lets go of her hand, stoops, and scoops something small out of the water.

you know  
im pretty sure ive seen one just like this  
but i think this guy is yours  
here  
its a little dirty

He holds it out. She presses her fingers to her lips, eyes blurring. It's Caerbannog. It's her bunny. Rose hasn't seen him in thirteen years, and here he is, four centuries later, dressed in a tattered pink robe and beard.

And it's as she takes the bunny from Dave that the sun breaks over the horizon, and maybe it's the dream, or maybe it's the dust and poison in the air from Earth's dying throes, but the sky lights up in a spectacular display of peach and lavender and scarlet, in fuchsia and ruby and gilt and the precise, glistening color inside of a blood orange, and then orange itself, and pink, and orchid, and red.

The words rush around her like a whirlwind, snatches of broken conversation between the last boy and girl to stand on this ruined planet and their golden-dreaming ghosts. My bro, they say. ...the purity of his ironic vision...killer pair of shades...visions...

She can barely hear the boy over the single, soft, beautiful, mom?

Dave is still there, still supporting the bunny, even as he blinks rapidly behind his shades. She finds herself, cradling Caerbannog against her chest, and the breeze picks up around them.

I see.  
I see!  
There's a path to victory after all.  
cool  
what are you going to do  
Me?  
I will wait.  
You have some catching up to do, after all, Sir Yesterday.  
ok  
are you going to make it up with your friend

Rose hesitates, then lowers her head. She remembers what Becka said--she's a shadow, she's a ghost. _"You're pining away for someone, aren't you?"_ And Dave is right there. The wind tickles her ear, the earth shores up her feet. As she chews thoughtfully, the taste of Caerbannog's ear is comfortingly familiar and grounding.

Yes.  
I will.

She will pay. She will lose the Outer Gods. She knows this. But if Dave is willing to fall for her, she is willing to fall for him. For them. For this sunset of a family blazing over the end of the world. For the ribbons of blue and green that weave beneath it.

good  
because one of us ought to have some social skills by the time we meet and i was literally raised in a barn

The ground drops away, but the wind remains, buoying them up, tugging their hair, nearly knocking Dave's shades off his face. They're in space, and space is suddenly tiny, so small and silly for all its beauty, for all it holds. The horrorterrors are the size of Squiddles, and Rose fears nothing.

see i knew it!!  
youll be patient and be brave and together well be one anothers heroes  
take care rose you wont be alone <3<3<3

Space is hers, and the starlight settles in her hair like rain.

There's a gentle push between her shoulder blades. The wind bumps clumsy but warm against her lips and says, go. you've got it from here.

She turns to Dave, Caerbannog tucked into the crook of her arm, and he puts his hands in his pockets.

dont look at me  
anything ive got to say ill just say it when i see you

Rose nods, smiles, and then offers him a wordless thumbs up.

He nods back, she turns her hand, and they bump fists.

Catch you later, bro.

\--

"Hey, Rose Lalonde, right?"

She pauses before she turns. It's been years since she woke up to that sunrise, righted things with Becka, sold her _Complacency_ , opened the bookstore. Years since she turned down Oglogoth's offer of immortality but kept her sight. Years since Crocker products began to turn up everywhere, too bright and overbearing to be insidious but undetected nonetheless. Years since the last time she heard his voice.

To her, he will always be thirteen, invaluable and young.

The man who speaks to her now is tall, attractive, well-dressed with bad posture. Older, he looks less like her; his sharpness is more pronounced, now, his purpose a little more complex. But he is still so incalculably precious that she nearly sends him on his way, breaks her promise to accept his death. The shell of his ear is the same.

Instead, she smiles. Instead, she laughs.

"I'd be Dave. Dave Strider."

Rose shakes his hand.

"How do you feel about tequila sunrises?" she asks.

He cocks an eyebrow high, but she already knows she will bring him home tonight, let him pass out on her couch, wake up to the sound of him and Becka laughing, see him dressed in one of her old thrift-store t-shirts, the one with three horses rearing at the moon that Becka had laughed at so much. She knows she will tell him he can keep it as long as he sports it so well.

He'll wear her colors.

She'll show him what they are.

**Author's Note:**

> The quote about God being jealous was one of the poorly cited quotes found [here](http://www.searchquotes.com/search/Jealous_God/).
> 
> I HOPE YOU LIKE IT.


End file.
